Syria Airstrikes No Instant Fix Against Islamic State

Smoke rise from the Syrian village of Quneitra, as a result of fighting between forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebels over the control of the Quneitra border crossing. Photographer: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- A year after he threatened attacks
on Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, U.S.
President Barack Obama is weighing airstrikes against Islamic
State extremists in Syria that could benefit Assad.

That unwanted consequence is one of a number of concerns
that are complicating U.S. planning for possible military action
against the extremist group, which poses a growing threat to
U.S. regional interests, Americans abroad and even the homeland.

Obama’s national security advisers have been meeting this
week to draft military options aimed at helping defeat what he
this week called “these barbaric terrorists.” The pace has
picked up since the militants put out a video showing the
beheading of American journalist James Foley, and increasingly
members of Congress are seeking a vote on whether to authorize
action against the group.

“Militarily, there is no short-term fix that will
completely defeat this threat,” said Janine Davidson, who was
deputy assistant secretary of defense for plans from 2009 to
2012.

“It’s really important to differentiate in our minds”
between stopping IS’s momentum and ending or defeating it as an
organization, said Davidson, who is now senior fellow for
defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations in
Washington. “Those are two very different things and take two
different, but coordinated, strategies.”

For the moment, the top priority should be to break the
group’s momentum, which would reduce its appeal to recruits and
its immediate threat, while working with regional leaders on a
strategy for longer-term actions, she said.

The challenges of a military operation are compounded by
foreign policy concerns, from the likelihood of Russian
opposition to doubts about support from Turkey.

War Drums

Public remarks by administration officials, including
Obama, have created expectations for imminent American military
action against the extremists in Syria. U.S. aircraft struck IS
positions in neighboring Iraq again yesterday, bringing to 101
the number of airstrikes there since the campaign began Aug. 8.

Obama has authorized increased aerial surveillance of
Syria, including manned and unmanned missions in Syrian
airspace, to help military planners identify possible targets.
The president has ruled out putting U.S. combat forces on the
ground in Iraq or Syria. That, along with a desire to avoid
civilian casualties, may mean that any airstrikes in Syria would
be directed against targets in the open, such as training areas,
convoys and military positions.

Urban Targets

“Then you don’t need as much ground support,” Davidson
said. “If you’re contemplating target sets that are
increasingly more urban, airpower starts to have less of an
effect.”

The approaches the administration is debating this week,
which two officials described as half-measures, run the risk of
being enough to help Islamic State brand the conflict as one
between believers and infidels, but not enough to annihilate the
small corps of extremists. The officials asked to speak
anonymously in order to discuss administration deliberations.

To some U.S. military leaders, one of the officials said,
the approach is reminiscent of American failures in Lebanon,
Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, where applications of
military power limited in both scope and time produced more
costs than benefits for American security.

Even so, there are complications from the tactical --- such
as how to avoid civilian casualties without spotters on the
ground -- to the geopolitical, which includes Obama’s oft-stated
concern about the perils of being drawn into the Syrian civil
war.

NATO Meeting

Obama and officials from the State and Defense departments
and U.S. intelligence agencies have been in contact with their
counterparts among U.S. allies to discuss the next phase in the
effort to stem Islamic State’s advances, White House press
secretary Josh Earnest said yesterday. The IS threat also will
be a topic when Obama and other leaders from the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization meet in Wales next week, he said.

While seeking to build an anti-IS coalition, the U.S. can’t
count on much help from NATO ally Turkey, whose 560-mile (900-kilometer) border with Syria provides the major routes for
radical foreign fighters.

The Ankara government is constrained because Islamic State
forces in June abducted 49 people at the Turkish consulate in
the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, as well as by its opposition
to any action that may bolster the Assad regime, according to
Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Economic Policy Research
Foundation in Ankara.

Turkish Base

“Even the use of Incirlik Air Base for airstrikes on IS
targets in Syria is something Turkey may not agree to,” Oytun
Orhan, an analyst at the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic
Studies, said in an interview in Ankara.

U.S. moves in Syria also may further complicate relations
with Russia, Assad’s key military supplier, amid the escalating
dispute over Russia’s involvement in Ukraine.

“Russia, however hypocritically given its actions in
Ukraine, will strongly object to U.S. intervention in Syria,”
particularly without an authorization from the United Nations
Security Council, according to analysis yesterday from the
Soufan Group, a New York-based security consulting firm.

Still, after Foley’s beheading sparked new calls for U.S.
action from politicians and pundits, Obama is revisiting the
question of whether to take military action in Syria, this time
in a different context and against a different enemy.

Congressional Mood

Last August, similar crisis meetings were convened to draw
up plans for missile strikes to punish Assad for using chemical
weapons against his opponents. Obama backed down due to
opposition in Congress, his own wariness about military
involvement in the Syrian civil war and a Russia-brokered deal
for Assad to give up his chemical weapons.

There are signs that this time Congress’s mood may be
different, given the level of concern that Islamic State or its
followers will seek to conduct a terrorist attack in the U.S.

If Obama is “prepared to try to prevent that, I’m sure he
will have a lot of congressional support,” Senate Republican
Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told CNN yesterday. Lawmakers
including Senators Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, and Bob
Corker, a Tennessee Republican, have called for Obama to seek
congressional approval for a military campaign.

Assad’s Offer

Assad’s government this week offered cooperation against
Islamic State, which has seized areas of northern and eastern
Syria for its self-proclaimed caliphate, while also warning that
unilateral U.S. airstrikes would be an act of aggression. U.S.
officials deny any intention of cooperating with Assad, whose
ouster Obama has sought for more than three years.

Concern about Islamic State “does not indicate a change in
our view and concerns about the Assad regime and the horrific
acts they’ve done against their own people,” State Department
spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Aug. 26.

Still, “Assad and his minions” are fueling the idea of
cooperation with Assad to drive a wedge between the U.S. and the
Sunni Arab nations that the U.S. is seeking to rally against IS,
said Fred Hof, who until last year served as Obama’s ambassador-at-large on the Syria crisis.

“We’ve had to work overtime to convince Saudis that we’ll
remain opposed to Assad, that there’s no plot, no fix,” Hof,
now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said
in an interview yesterday. He said that should include
increasing help for what the Obama administration considers
moderate rebel factions as evidence that the U.S. remains
committed to Assad’s ouster.

‘Very Targeted’

The necessity of near-term airstrikes in Syria to prevent
the further collapse of Iraq “might outweigh the potential of
helping Assad and rival extremist groups,” according to the
Soufan Group report.

“To be effective, airstrikes will have to be very
targeted, and that requires real-time intelligence and on-the-ground spotters” to avoid civilian casualties, the group said,
expressing doubt that other Syrian rebel groups could perform
that function. “Without eyes on the ground, airstrikes might
prove to be too inaccurate, and therefore prove to be
counterproductive,” it cautioned.

Islamic State forces may be relatively easy to target in
the Syrian city of Raqqah, which the group considers its
capital, while “shifting lines and actors” elsewhere will
require that airstrikes be “more targeted and less
substantial,” the Soufan Group said.

Small-Unit Tactics

IS already is adapting to the U.S. air campaign by
reverting to terrorist and small-unit tactics, and that means
ground troops will be necessary to stop the extremists’ advance
and reduce its recruiting appeal, then to defeat them in time,
according to the two U.S. officials.

In planning for U.S. strikes a year ago, officials were
concerned about Syria’s extensive air-defense system.

Targeted strikes in the eastern and northern parts of
Syria, Islamic State’s stronghold, are a “very different”
matter than around Damascus or on Assad’s airfields, “which are
more heavily defended by surface-to-air” weapons, said
Davidson.

Obama is right to worry about a slippery slope because
“the debate could eventually shift heavily in favor of ousting
the Assad regime, and there are many actors inside Syria and in
the region that have an interest in bringing Washington and
Damascus into a direct military confrontation,” Ramzy Mardini,
a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said in an e-mail
from Amman.